iTunes Tells Buju Banton to "Boom Bye Bye"

According to a story that came out in the Jamaica Star last week, Apple Inc has recently removed some songs deemed homophobic from their catalog. Buju Banton's "Boom Bye Bye" was one of those songs and according to this article, some Canadian gay rights organizations are happy the song was removed.

"This is an historic victory for the LGBT community here in Canada and in the Caribbean," Akim Larcher, founder of Stop Murder Music (Canada) was quoted in the article. "iTunes is exercising its corporate responsibility by pulling this murder music and raising the bar for other retailers and distributors to do the same."

In addition to "Boom Bye Bye", iTunes removed songs from T.O.K. and Elephant Man (but no other artists faced this censorship that I can tell) which makes it seem as if homophobia is strictly a dancehall problem.

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The push behind this came from Stop Murder Music, a global non-profit gay rights organization that has lobbied for years to shut down reggae concerts (quite often successfully) for artists like Beenie Man, Capleton, and others.

There's a lot of debate that could and should come from this. Freedom of speech immediately comes to mind. And should other artists who use homophobic material in their music have their songs pulled...or will it just be dancehall artists only?

They've got some kinks to work out and if you've got something to say about this, please chime in.